by Leo Marks
It looked like an ordinary pocket handkerchief, and in case she was tempted to blow her nose on it I hastily handed her a torch which had been fitted with an ultraviolet beam and invited her to switch it on. A few seconds later she was astonished to find herself staring at a hundred WOK keys which had been invisibly printed.
‘It would be useless without this, Miss Hornsby-Smith.’
I then picked up an ordinary-looking pencil, which it had taken Elder Wills six months to produce. Praying it would work, I rubbed it across the handkerchief and a whole line of WOK keys disappeared.
I then explained that the chemicals in the pencil ensured that the keys could be permanently erased the moment they’d been used, and her response was immediate.
‘So if the handkerchief is captured the back messages are safe?’
Impressed by her perception but disturbed by her enthusiasm, I hastily added that invisible codes weren’t for general issue, as they could only be used in special circumstances.
This didn’t deter my visitors from testing Wills’s wizardry (ladies first), and Nick accidentally erased three lines of keys.
The sledgehammer then asked for a specimen of every silk she’d seen ‘with instructions attached’ so that she could explain them to the minister. She was particularly keen to show him the handkerchief and pencil, but I had to explain that they were the first examples of their kind the Thatched Barn had produced, and I’d promised Elder Wills not to part with them.
Giving me a look which she would one day bestow on the House of Lords when she was Baroness Hornsby-Smith, she declared that they’d be far more use in the minister’s hands than languishing on my desk and, after a warning glance from Sporborg and some eyebrow Morse from Nick, I reluctantly surrendered them.
Locking them in her briefcase with an array of silks I couldn’t spare, she thanked me for trusting her with them (another joke perhaps?), and departed five minutes later to accompany Nick on a tour of the stations.
I subsequently learned from Heffer that she’d christened the silks ‘toys’ and the coders ‘Marks’s harem’. He didn’t disclose what she’d christened me.
My encounter with her had been a wholly new experience not because she was a minister’s PA but because I’d been supported throughout by an invisible presence.
This wasn’t the moment to dwell on who she was, or how I’d been lucky enough to meet her, or any other such trivia. All that mattered to me was that she’d become part of the code war and that I wanted her beside me for the rest of my life.
Although Selborne relied on the old hands in Baker Street for ammunition to convince the Cabinet that SOE’s activities were an asset, it wasn’t the Executive Council, the country sections or the Signals directorate which enabled him to make his first breakthrough. It was Flemming Muus of Denmark.
In the nine months since this remarkable agent (the Danish equivalent of Tommy) had taken control of his country’s resistance, he’d not only succeeded in ensuring that SOE continued to receive key information about the rocket sites at Peenemünde; he’d welded his co-patriots into a secret army, organised over nine hundred acts of sabotage and started a training school at Zeeland for would-be agents. Although reluctant to leave Denmark, he’d been recalled to London in October for consultations with Commander Hollingsworth and the Free Danish Council, and Lord Selborne had decorated him with the DSO on King George VI’s behalf.
I’d given him a code briefing early in November, and he was as hearty and forthcoming as when I’d briefed his Table Top team. He admitted it was hard to concentrate on codes when he had so much else to attend to, and we arranged to meet again before he left, which he estimated would be within two weeks ‘at the outsidest’.
On 2 December he was still in London and accompanied Commander Hollingsworth to a conference convened by Brigadier Mockler-Ferryman (head of the Western directorate). Neither they nor any of the other officers present knew why they’d been summoned.
They were informed by Mockler-Ferryman that SOE had been instructed by the War Office to cease all operations in Denmark, Holland and Belgium until further notice. They were also told that the War Office required an acknowledgement of the order by ten o’clock next morning and wanted draft plans to be submitted for the recalling of SOE personnel.
On 3 December an enraged Muus descended on Whitehall, accompanied by Mockler-Ferryman and Hollingsworth, who soon found themselves redundant.
Determined to prove with the plain-speaking for which he was famous that there was no danger of his country becoming another Holland, he bombarded the War Office and Air Ministry with facts about the Danish Resistance of which they were completely unaware.
The War Office withdrew its embargo, and the Air Ministry agreed to resume sorties over Denmark – with the exception of certain areas which Muus pointed out were too well protected for the aircrews’ safety.
He was due to return to Denmark on 11 December to attend to his lesser duties, and on 9 December I gave him his final code briefing. The invisible presence sat next to him throughout, and when he thanked me for the WOKs and LOPs he was taking home with him, she kissed him goodbye on his invaluable forehead.
Her name was Ruth, and she lived with her parents in a flat in Park West, and we’d met two months ago in unpromising circumstances. She enjoyed the swimming pool, and early one morning she’d caught me swinging across the rings in my bowler hat, which I’d doffed to her without falling in, and even that hadn’t prevented her from seeing me again.
Although we were able to meet for only a few hours a week, every sked with her taught me that there were forms of communication which I didn’t know existed. I learned that she had a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, which meant that I could safely take her home to my parents as she was half a nice Jewish girl.
I’d persuaded her that I worked in an admin office in Baker Street and she wondered if it was the ‘funny outfit’ which used to be run by her godfather. She then informed me that he lived in Park West – ‘His name’s Charles Hambro and he’s a merchant banker.’
I told her that he’d need to be, as he was a customer of my father’s.
I did my best not to think about her in Baker Street (if agents could cut away their silk lifelines, so could I) but my best wasn’t good enough, and I could think of little else. I’d been worried about going to bed with her in case I talked in my sleep but soon discovered that she was my sleep.
We both tried to forget that she was returning to Canada shortly before Christmas to resume training at an air-ambulance base.
*
On 10 December Sporborg warned Gubbins in his strongest telegram yet that C and the Air Ministry were broadening the scope of their attack and were trying to force an inquiry into ‘every aspect’ of SOE’s activ-ities. (He’d underlined ‘every aspect’ in red ink, for which there was no cipher equivalent, so we repeated the phrase in case eagle-eye missed it.)
The warning had the desired effect, and on 11 December Gubbins flew to Algiers en route to London.
By the Mighty Atom’s standards, he’d failed to accomplish his Middle East master plan. By anyone else’s, his successes were phenomenal. Ignoring the climatic conditions (and possibly causing them), he’d not only established SOE’s future role in the Balkans, which the Americans were trying to diminish; he’d reorganised Cairo and Massingham, sorted out the chaos in Greece and sold SOE’s potential to a general named Eisenhower. He’d even found time to convince Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia that SOE would send his partisans the arms and supplies they needed, though the same assurances had been given to his rival Mihailovic.
He arrived in Baker Street on 16 December, and at once composed a memorandum for the Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff which Nick described to Heffer as ‘a masterpiece’, a term he usually reserved for Signals equipment.
With the Mighty Atom now in control of the Whitehall conflict, it was possible to concentrate on SOE’s other little war.
On 18 December Dourlein and Ub
brinck (the Dutch escapees) sent a message from Spain amplifying their warnings that all Dutch radio links were in enemy hands, and identifying the WT operators they’d encountered in Haaren prison (the two agents had been smuggled out of Switzerland by MI6).
On 22 December Flemming Muus reported from Copenhagen that the decisions reached in London had been fully implemented, and Denmark had been divided into six military districts, each supervised by a regional committee on which SOE was represented. All this in a tiny country infested with Germans.
It was a very different situation for the Free French and Buckmaster. On 23 December messages from France warned both Duke Street and F section that shortage of supplies was forcing agents to take unnecessary risks in order to survive and that many of them had been caught by the Gestapo or the Vichy police. The messages urged SOE to resume dropping operations.
On Christmas Eve I learned from Ruth’s father that she’d been killed in a plane crash in Canada. I went up to the roof of Norgeby House, which was the closest I could get to her.
Someone called out, ‘There’s an idiot on the roof.’
There was a quick way down from it, but she wouldn’t have approved. Looking up at God’s pavement for signs of new pedestrians, I transmitted a message to her which I’d failed to deliver when I’d had the chance:
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
End of sked.
I went downstairs and wished the girls a Happy Christmas.
SIXTY
Fumigated
‘It’s impossible to share premises with the country stations. They don’t bother to make appointments, hold endless conferences in corridors and take the lot of us for granted. Well, it’s damn well got to stop.’
Heffer, when he’d been interrupted from his newspaper once too often
The Signals directorate began the New Year by seeking selfcontainment, and on 1 January 1944 Nick and his department heads left Norgeby House and occupied the whole of Montagu Mansions, a block of flats off Baker Street where we’d be cut off from the rest of SOE yet within easy reach (the Guru thought too easy) of the country sections. The Signals Office, teleprinter rooms and distribution departments remained in situ for practical reasons. Nor did we disturb the WOK-makers as some of them could no longer see straight and mightn’t have found the new premises.
Our departure enabled Gubbins to reshuffle Norgeby House. He’d long wanted all the country sections under one roof, and he at once ordered Tommy and Co. to leave Dorset Square and occupy the space we’d vacated, a decision which gave the Free French the illusion of parity with Buckmaster.
I learned from Tommy (who disliked sharing premises with ‘Maurice’s lot’) that my old office was to be used by the head of RF section, ‘once it had been fumigated’.
My new one was soon in need of similar treatment. It was twice the size of my previous office, and I had it entirely to myself. The windows were heavily barred, in keeping with my chest, and I kept the curtains drawn, as the room was at street level and there was no longer anything I wanted to look out on.
Muriel had covered the walls with silks, which were concealed behind drapes. Fluorescent lights shone on to them whenever I could find the switch, and although it was against the rules for low-levels like me to have carpets in their offices, she’d found one which matched the drapes. But my most unexpected acquisition was a FANY sergeant named Penelope Wyvol-Thompson. Formerly a coder, then a WOK-maker, she’d become Muriel’s assistant and now spent most of her time ensuring that ‘no one interfered with the little man’s privacy’. As a bodyguard she was worth her weight in WOKs.
Unable to settle down, I spent the first day inspecting the premises and spotted a slender young secretary named Anne Turner struggling to carry a large typewriter down the corridor.
To her astonishment and mine I took the machine from her and carried it to the typing pool’s office, where she thanked me profusely in front of her awestruck colleagues. Although to my regret she never worked for the code department, she was destined to make a contribution to it of which at the time she was mercifully unaware.*
I returned to my office and tried to make a home of it.
By mid-January the demands for silks had become impossible to meet. The Free French wanted a thousand more copies of the FFI code book, country sections had doubled their D-Day estimates (if only half of their operations were mounted, the invasion would be superfluous), and Italy, Cairo and India had increased their orders by 50 per cent.
But our greatest problems were caused not by SOE’s expansion but by Pat Hornsby-Smith.
The sledgehammer had phoned three times to demand more ‘toys’ for the minister, and on Nick’s instructions I’d supplied them immediately. But it wasn’t the handfuls of silks she required which put us under pressure; it was the use Selborne made of them.
I’d no idea whom he showed them to, but within hours of the last delivery ‘outside organisations’ (including C) began bombarding Nick with requests to call at Baker Street to inspect our codes. He agreed to every request, except C’s (he was discussing it with the Executive Council), and by the middle of January my office had become London’s leading toyshop.
Most of the visitors seemed impressed by the silks, but to my relief none of them tried to place any orders.
Nick had twice warned me (once in writing to stress that he meant it) that if any organisations made direct contact with me I must refer them to him for screening before agreeing to an appointment. It wasn’t long before this contingency arose.
On 18 January Muriel informed me that a Captain Astor was in her office. She added that he was a member of the SAS and that he’d called on the off chance that I’d see him without an appointment! Liking the sound of a captain who took off chances, I told her that I’d give him a quarter of an hour as soon as she’d checked his credentials.
Five minutes later a fair-haired young captain appeared on the threshold, but at once turned to leave when he saw that I was on the phone. Unaccustomed to such consideration, I beckoned him to a chair whilst I finished talking to the Grendon supervisor in shorthand. He spent the time staring apprehensively at the blackboard, on which I’d written a famous quotation from Frances Croft Cornford for the coders to reconstruct at my next lecture (I’d produced no poems of my own since Xmas Eve):
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
Replacing the receiver, I asked Captain Astor how I could help him.
He replied that the SAS needed an expert to advise them on codes, and if possible to supply them, and he’d reason to believe he’d come to the right person.
I knew nothing about the SAS except that they operated behind enemy lines and had been founded by a maverick young officer named David Stirling, who sounded as if he were SOE-minded.
So did Captain Astor, but before I could allow him to proceed there was one formality which had to be disposed of.
‘Sorry to have to ask you this, Captain, but who gave you the authority to approach SOE?’
‘Sorry to have to tell you this, Mr Marks, but I forgot to ask for it! Here’s my CO’s number if you want it.’
‘I don’t think it’ll be necessary.’ His reply had ensured that he’d get all the help I could give him.
‘What sort of traffic are you likely to pass?’
He produced a bundle of specimen messages (the first visitor who’d done so) but they were so carefully phrased I suspected they’d been composed especia
lly for the occasion. Pressed for detail, he estimated that the average message would be fifty letters long and that most of the D-Day traffic would be between France and London, though in certain areas two-way communication between SAS units would save ‘a lot of to-ing and fro-ing’.
We to-ed and fro-ed between ourselves for several minutes, and I decided that they could most safely pass their paramilitary-type messages in code books and letter one-time pads. We’d also have to supply them with WOKs for emergencies, of which I imagined there’d be plenty. Providing them with two-way communication as well meant that we’d have to dig into the last of our reserves. But so would the SAS when they reached the field. It was time to demonstrate the merchandise.
Pulling back the curtains (I knew by now where the light switch was), I explained the various systems and added that if the SAS proved to be temperamentally unsuited to code books they could encode their messages directly on to pads.
Captain Astor had only one question for me: ‘How soon can we have some for training purposes?’
‘Would tomorrow be soon enough?’
The smile which parachuted from his eyes to his lips reminded me of Tommy’s when he was still able to smile.
I then explained that I’d need an informed estimate of the quantities they’d require and that he’d better leave the formalities to me, as his approach had been somewhat irregular.
He shook my hand in silence.
Five minutes later he took a final glance at the ‘fat white woman whom nobody loves’ and hurried away, probably to drop in on the Chiefs of Staff without an appointment.
The following morning I was assembling Astor’s training codes when Heffer strolled in.
‘Prepare yourself for a shock,’ he said, an innovation which was a shock in itself.
He waited till his cigarette was aglow with excitement before making his announcement. ‘We’ve been asked by the War Office to supply codes for all Special Forces.’